[Vision2020] New topic

[Carl Westberg]

I concur with Joan's opinion on this, and regarding indulging her "own vice 
for pints of alcoholic cider without coming out reeking like an ashtray", 
should that unfortunate circumstance arise, fear not.  Get smoke smell out 
of clothes by adding a cup of
vinegar to a bath tub of hot water.
Hang clothes above the steam.
                                                                             
                                                                    Carl 
Westberg Jr.


>From: Joan Opyr <joanopyr at earthlink.net>
>To: "jill was framed" <w_w_s_d_ at hotmail.com>
>CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] New topic
>Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 10:36:47 -0800
>
>
>On 8 Dec 2005, at 09:30, jill was framed wrote:
>
>>Hello All -
>>
>>Been off the list for awhile but came back to see what's new.  New 
>>subject...what do you think of the new Washington no smoke ban?  I think 
>>we just might have a few more packed bars here in Moscow....vices are good 
>>for the economy!
>>Personally I don't smoke but I think the bar should be the one place 
>>people can cut loose and relax.
>>
>>Now I'm going to catch up on the archives and see if I've missed anything.
>>
>>J.
>
>Okay, here's where my odd libertarian streak (not to mention my North 
>Carolina tobacco-farming family history) comes to the forefront: I am 
>concerned about the health risks of second-hand smoke to bartenders and 
>wait staff.  I know that as non-smoker who grew up in a house full of 
>chain-smokers, I have something like a 3 times greater risk of contracting 
>lung cancer, and while there is treatment, there is no cure.  I know all of 
>this and yet . . . we have the right to our various vices.  With each new 
>broad-reaching, protect-us-from-ourselves, anti-smoking ordinance that 
>passes, I feel a wild desire to drive down to the reservation at Lapwai and 
>buy a carton of untaxed cigarettes.  I want to go into the Co-Op puffing on 
>a Sobranie Black Russian in a long FDR filter, fling my mink coat over my 
>shoulders, and say in my best Bette Davis voice, "What a dump!"
>
>This makes no sense.  I really don't like smoking.  I'm an asthmatic.  My 
>father and grandparents nearly killed me with their ceaseless puffing.  We 
>used to take 800-mile road trips with my father, who chain-smoked brown 
>More cigarettes with his window cracked open one inch, as if that would 
>dispel the choking smoke.  I used to have to hit the inhaler once every 
>fifteen minutes, all the way from North Carolina to Michigan.  By the time 
>we reached the halfway point in Charleston, West Virginia, I was bouncing 
>off the doors of our wood-paneled Country Squire station wagon.
>
>And yet . . . my high school in Raleigh had both a teacher's and a 
>student's smoking lounge.  Smoking, tobacco farming, tobacco auctions, the 
>annual harvest -- these are the things of my childhood.  Nothing smells as 
>good as fresh-picked tobacco when it's hanging in the curing barn.  Once 
>you turn it into a dried-up cigarette and set fire to it, frankly, it 
>stinks.  But before that, tobacco smells kind of like raisins or cured 
>dates.  It's a sweet smell, but not sickly or cloying.
>
>Finally, just how many of our vices is the government planning to regulate? 
>  When does regulation cross the line from public good to personal 
>harassment?  No, I don't think smokers should stink up restaurants where 
>I'm trying to eat -- and we all know that a smoking section right next to a 
>non-smoking section means the whole joint is a smoking section.  Smoke pays 
>no attention to signage.  I also have to admit that I enjoyed the new 
>non-smoking pubs in London and Newcastle.  I could indulge my own vice for 
>pints of alcoholic cider without coming out reeking like an ashtray.  But I 
>do hate to see smokers clustered around the entrances of buildings, 
>twitching and puffing like heroin addicts at the methadone clinic.  And how 
>long will it be, I wonder, before my own vices come under relentless legal 
>assault?  Wouldn't it be better if someone watered down the booze in my 
>Bahama Mama at Applebee's?  A couple of those and I feel like singing . . . 
>a couple more and I feel like singing opera, Bugs Bunny style.  (Put those 
>AA brochures back in your pocket.  I only do this about once a year.)
>
>Okay, I've meandered down memory lane long enough.  I approve of no smoking 
>in restaurants; I think that bars should have the option of allowing 
>smoking or not, as they see fit.  We have the right to smoke.  We have the 
>right to overeat.  We have the right to drink, to not exercise, to exist on 
>a diet of Pepsi and Fritos, to live fast, die young, and leave a corpse so 
>bloated it requires a piano case.  We should not be regulated, bullied, or 
>pressured into Jack LaLane fitness.  The health costs of smoking are 
>tremendous, and they should be born by smokers and by the tobacco 
>companies; not by the rest of us.  But I don't hate smokers, and I don't 
>believe in treating them like pariahs.
>
>Just a few thoughts, addled, no doubt, by my family's ceaseless puffing.
>
>Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
>www.joanopyr.com
>
>


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